


Exile

by deborah_judge



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: Collection: Purimgifts Day 1, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-14
Updated: 2011-03-14
Packaged: 2017-10-16 23:37:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/170593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deborah_judge/pseuds/deborah_judge
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>D'Anna stayed on Earth for a reason.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Exile

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lucidSeraph](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lucidSeraph/gifts).



D'Anna only decided to stay because of the cactus. It was Laura who found it. She held it, weeping. To Laura it looked like despair. To D'Anna it looked like hope. Something could grow here, something tough and prickly and hard. Something not unlike a cactus.

The first night was the most difficult. The war that had destroyed this world had made clouds of radiation-filled dust that still blocked out much of the light, so when the sun set on D'Anna's first night on Earth it was scarcely darker than it had been before. And the fleet was gone, and D'Anna would never see her brothers and sisters again. It made sense. Union with humans was their path. She had her own path, one only a Three could understand, and she was the only Three still left alive. She could wish that God had spared her sister Threes, as God had allowed her brother and sisters the companionship of others like them, but God's plans had proven beyond her imagining. In any case they had brought her here.

In the morning D'Anna began to forage. She found a fruit-bearing cactus and the fruit was awkward to eat but tasty. Some grasses looked like they bore edible grains. It would take work, and hope, but there could once again be life in this place. She believed this with more certainty than she had ever believed in God.

The second night brought rain and fog. The radiation-laden water would have been death to any human, but humanity was a pretence that D'Anna had renounced when she decided to stay. She let the rain glance off her skin and watched it fall on the radiation-drenched ground. The life that had been here had never been human. Nor would be the life that would come. God had brought her here, the One God that her ancestors had been too proud to worship. She would make a home in the land that had once been theirs.

On the third day she found a city. Like every other city on this planet it was no more than a mass grave. And no less. Bones and skeletons of humanoids and centurions. "Mother" she called to the bones, "Father" to the metal turned into scrap. Some would be salvageable. A race made of metal could be made of metal again. It would take time. D'Anna wondered how much she had. There was no way of knowing how long it would take for a humanoid Cylon to die of old age. She could only pray that it would be enough.

On the fourth day she decided to give her city a name. She started with _peace_ but she settled on _Home_.

Picture of St. Anna, patron saint of grandmothers. Image from:  
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Anna_Burgos.JPG


End file.
